Small amendment arguments: how they work and what they do and do not show

Martin van Hees, Akshath Jitendranath and Roland Iwan Luttens
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Martin van Hees: VU - Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam [Amsterdam]
Akshath Jitendranath: PSE - Paris School of Economics - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - ENS-PSL - École normale supérieure - Paris - PSL - Université Paris Sciences et Lettres - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - ENPC - École nationale des ponts et chaussées - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement, PJSE - Paris Jourdan Sciences Economiques - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - ENS-PSL - École normale supérieure - Paris - PSL - Université Paris Sciences et Lettres - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - ENPC - École nationale des ponts et chaussées - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement
Roland Iwan Luttens: VU - Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam [Amsterdam]

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Abstract: The small improvement argument has been said to establish that the standard weak preference or value relation can be incomplete. We first show that the argument is one of three possible ‘small amendment arguments', each of which would yield the same conclusion. Generalizing the analysis thus, we subsequently present a strong and a weak version of small amendment arguments and derive the exact rationality conditions under which they reveal incompleteness. The results show that the arguments (in any of their variants) need not reveal a problem for the possibility of rational choice. In fact, it can be argued that they only reveal such a problem if the underlying relation is complete rather than incomplete.

Keywords: Small improvement argument; Rational choice; Incompleteness of preferences (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025-01
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Published in Theory and Decision, 2025, 98 (1), pp.153-163. ⟨10.1007/s11238-024-10002-2⟩

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:halshs-04960740

DOI: 10.1007/s11238-024-10002-2

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